The same goes for Alyson Heller and at least a half-dozen other high school and college students who work from two to 20 hours each week as library pages, shelving and straightening out books and other materials. Their hours have been cut to zero, and the budget for pages is in the red by $679.53.

Monday, Lofquist and Heller went to the microphone at a board of finance public budget hearing to ask where the money for pages has gone.

``One of the librarians told me they're really struggling with us on reduced hours,'' Heller said after the meeting. She said her hours were cut from 13 to 3 in February before she was dropped completely from the payroll in mid-March.

Librarians on Tuesday said they're managing. One said that the stacks are messy, making it more difficult for patrons to find books, and another said that most days that aren't ``crazy busy,'' she and her co-workers manage to dash out and shelve books in between serving patrons.

Library Director James G. ``Jay'' Johnston said the page salary account was underbudgeted from the beginning. Johnston dismissed the notion -- which the pages attributed to a ``reliable source'' -- that money in the page account was mismanaged, spent on track lighting, painting and other remodeling.

``That's ridiculous -- we have a maintenance account for that,'' Johnston said Tuesday. ``I absolutely did not spend any money from the page account, or any account, inappropriately.''

If he had his way a year ago, Johnston said, he'd have at least $30,000 in the page account, which town officials instead cut to $22,829 for the current fiscal year. In the previous fiscal year, the library spent $29,577 on the salary for its approximately 10 pages.

Two months ago, Johnston said, he asked the board of finance to approve transferring $8,000 from another account -- part-time replacements -- to cover the pages' minimum-wage paychecks. Johnston said he hired a part-time children's librarian in January, so half the budgeted salary will be available to cover the pages.

But because no one from the library was around to answer questions at the last board of finance meeting, the board postponed making a decision.

With a ``large upswing'' in circulation, plus a 30-cents-an-hour boost to the minimum wage in January, Johnston and his bookkeeper, Claudia Pistilli, said preparing the department's budget in January for the fiscal year starting July is no easy task. ``I've been here 30-something years, and we never end up with the right amount in the page account,'' Pistilli said.

And while the library is out of its hourly wage help, the students are upset that their jobs have been put in limbo for at least a month. It's still not clear whether the pages will work their regular hours, or reduced hours when April 11 rolls around -- if they return at all, adult services Librarian Billie Witkovic said.

``It's not like we want to just buy clothes,'' Heller said Monday night. ``We were saving for college.''